Pocahontas

RELEASE DATE: June 23

Disney’s POCAHONTAS is the big animated feature of the summer of 1995, a part of the “Disney Renaissance” and feature animation resurgence that started in the late ’80s and early ’90s. But if the popularity of Disney animation was a motherfucker trying to ice skate uphill, this would be the point when he had just reached the top and now was beginning to slide back down in reverse. It came out a year almost to the day after THE LION KING, the tale of fathers and sons and a bunch of unrelated songs about a farting warthog and a smartass weasel guy or whatever, which smashed all box office records for animated features and remained the highest grossing of all time until TOY STORY 3 beat it 16 years later. More importantly, POCAHONTAS came about 5 months before the first TOY STORY arrived like a European with an infected blanket, triggering the end of the popularity of line drawings on the big screen.

Though not very highly regarded, and controversial for its fictionalization of history, I think POCAHONTAS is a respectable swan song for the age of Disney hand drawn animation. It goes whole hog with the house formula of glamorous heroines in a Broadway-inspired musical format, but takes some risks and, most notably, gloriously showcases the artistry of the studio’s best animators, designers and colorists.

The story is loosely based on the historic encounter between English settlers and the Powhatan Indians in 1607, and the most-likely-made-up legend of the Chief’s daughter saving Captain John Smith from execution. In Disney’s version Pocahontas is not a child but a young woman (voice of Irene Bedard, THE TREE OF LIFE), known for her free spirit and extreme cliff-diving. She looks totally different from the other Disney Princesses, your Belles and your Ariels, though she is lanky and gorgeous and has long hair that dances spectacularly on every gust of wind.

As the formula dictates, her father Chief Powhatan is very caring but doesn’t understand her, and tries to arrange her a marriage with the warrior Kocoum (James Apaumut Fall). You know how these fuckin dads are.

But then the whites show up and she sneaks around spying on the dreamy blond, John Smith (voice of Mel Gibson, PAPARAZZI). The scene where Pocahontas and Smith first encounter each other by a waterfall is an animation storytelling masterwork, from the atmospheric mist and hair-blowing wind, to Pocahontas’s odd, agile movements, to the subtle facial expressions as they silently stare each other down, to the magical-realist way they acknowledge and then erase the language barrier. The lead animator for Pocahontas herself was Glen Keane, son of the dude who drew that weird comic strip The Family Circus, and possibly Disney’s best animator throughout that period. (He also drew The Little Mermaid and Tarzan.)

This is a straight-faced melodrama with no farting, and only songs that are very emotional and important to the plot or the characterization. Other than the pear-shaped villain Governor Ratcliffe (David Ogden Stiers, THX 1138) and his Ichabod-esque assistant, the people are generally less caricatured than your average Disney characters. The Powhatans especially are drawn in a fairly realistic style, as are most of the settlers (including cabin boy Thomas, voiced by Christian Bale).

The stock comic relief does come from your usual cute Disney animals (a raccoon and hummingbird that follow Pocahontas around, and the Governor’s pampered pug dog), but none of them talk. In my opinion the pantomime makes for a classier level of wacky comic hijinks. In some of the ’90s Disney movies the comedy bits are something you just have to tolerate in order to get anything out of the movie, but here they’re fine. I think the only bad joke is a pun made by a talking tree (long story), but it’s immediately derided by two eye-rolling owls in a judgmental reaction shot.

Though totally fictional, and offensive according to some people, the Disney people chose to turn this into a forbidden love story, with Pocahontas and Smith getting to know each other and then trying to form a bridge between the settlers (who are led by a jerk looking for gold, and who see the natives as savages and have plenty of experience killing them) and the locals (who correctly see the settlers as a threat and believe they need to be fought off).

Some descendants of the Powhatan have publicly objected to Disney turning a self-serving and most likely fabricated story by John Smith (who was apparently not the hero or charmer of the movie) into an even more souped-up fable for children. Fair enough. But regardless of matters of taste, the symbolic substance is hard to disagree with: people of two different cultures meeting, learning from each other, putting themselves on the line to end a conflict.

Interestingly, the movie’s greedy settler villain (who is visually paralleled with a rat as he enters the movie) probly gets more of a historical accuracy raw deal than the idealized Powhatan tribe. The character may be based on other governors, but the actual man named John Ratcliffe was considered by the real Smith to be too generous in trading with the Natives. Worse, he went to trade with them but it was a trap, and supposedly they tied him naked to a tree, scraped off his skin with mussel shells and burned him alive. I imagine that account may have been exaggerated, but if there’s any truth to it you gotta feel kinda bad for the guy now being turned into a fat, greedy asshole in a cartoon. “I’m the bad guy?”

One criticism I’ve heard of the POCAHONTAS story is “But they gave it a happy ending. In reality the Europeans committed genocide!” First of all, if your kids never learn that context I’m afraid that’s a failure of parents and teachers, not animators. I don’t really think they should end with text about that just because you don’t know how to break it to your kids. Second, let’s not underestimate the progressiveness of a G-rated cartoon musical that does acknowledge racism and genocide. It opens with the white hero misguidedly singing about “killing me some Injuns.” The song “Savages” makes no bones about the English settlers being racists who call Pocahontas and her people “dirty redskin devils” and the like to incite a war. Compare that to the Natives in PETER PAN, who sing in broken English about “what made the red man red.” It’s a whole bunch of steps in the right direction.

No, children won’t understand the cinematic technique of the movie beginning and ending as framed illustrations to indicate that it’s a story, a legend. But they also, I am convinced, do not believe in their minds that this animation represents real life, real history. There’s always a danger with “based on a true story” movies misleading the public about which parts really happened, but I think this factor is negligible when you’re talking about a cartoon, even if it didn’t have funny animal characters (I looked on Wikipedia to see how close they stayed to the facts on the real, historical Meeko the Raccoon, but I couldn’t find anything). Or even a musical in general. Even in a subconscious sense, I have a hard time believing that we internalize Disney cartoons and confuse them with our knowledge of actual history. I don’t think that’s a problem.

One thing they will take away though is a “Disney Princess” of color, with distinctly non-European features, who resists arranged marriage just as well as Jasmine or any of ’em, but is more independent and much more physically capable, and whose legend is based not only on promoting racial and cultural harmony, but on an act of passive resistance to stop a war! The heroes stop the villain not by throwing him off a cliff, but by wrestling his gun away from him and taking him away (admittedly in chains).

And as actor and activist Russell Means, who voiced Chief Powhatan, put it: “POCAHONTAS is the first time Eurocentric male society has admitted its historical deceit. It makes the stunning admission that the British came over here to kill Indians and rape and pillage the land. LION KING was this generation’s BAMBI, demonstrating that animals have feelings and causing children to question the morality of sport hunting. POCAHONTAS teaches that pigmentation and bone structure have no place in human relations. It’s the finest feature film on American Indians Hollywood has turned out.”

Means calls the movie’s detractors “scholastic, linear-thinking nit-pickers,” which is a phrase I should probly keep handy.

I think it’s interesting to compare POCAHONTAS to Disney’s 1998 movie, MULAN, which depicts a Chinese historical period without having become a target of the scholastic, linear-thinking nit-pickers. It has no “Controversy” section on its Wikipedia page. I guess that’s because it’s based on a legend, not a real person? But unlike POCAHONTAS it does have some white people (June Foray, Harvey Fierstein) playing non-white characters, so you’d think people would be touchy about it. Nope. It got much better reviews than POCAHONTAS too (Rotten Tomatoes 86%, Metacritic 71, vs. 56%/58). To me, though, MULAN’s story, songs and especially visuals are dull and lifeless compared to POCAHONTAS, to the point where the clear highlight of the movie is the fuckin comic relief sidekick dragon played by Eddie Murphy.

I’ve tried to watch MULAN twice, and it sounds like it would be a cool story (woman secretly pretends to be man to go to war – cool, Chinese war with swords, too!), but both times it was a snooze. POCAHONTAS (which is about the opposite, a woman openly standing up to stop a war), on the other hand, grabs me immediately with its smart, economical storytelling. I especially like the clever scene transitions (which I want to call “editing” but I’m sure they were planned exactly like this), for example the opening number is a rowdy sailor song about adventuring and killing Indians. Smith looks out off the bow of the ship as he talks about all the “new worlds” he’s visited, and asks “What could possibly be different about this one?”

Later the workers grouse about the governor living it up in his fancy tent. It cuts from Billy Connolly (THE BOONDOCK SAINTS) saying “while Ratcliffe sits up in his tent all day, happy as a clam” to Ratcliffe inside freaking out, saying “I’m doomed!”

And another one is when the tribe meets about the threat of the settlers. “These white men are dangerous,” the Chief says. “No one is to go near them.” Cut to his own daughter Pocahontas’s face goofily reflected in Smith’s helmet, like a funhouse mirror. And then they’re sitting around together looking like it’s a first date.

But even if you can’t get into that, it must be acknowledged that this is a great looking movie. Everybody loves real paint, but the advent of computerized coloring in these cartoons seems to have really pushed the artform forward, helping them to create subtle lighting effects, a really sophisticated way of adding realism. But I love that this one also gets really bold with the colors…

…especially during the scene leading up to the climax as the two sides beat the drums of war. A bonfire is used as an excuse to get feverish and experimental with those hues.

This is also when the movie rips open its chest and exposes its beating heart. It fully commits to the melodrama and uses dissolves to create its most operatic moment as the scene of Smith about to have his head smacked open is under a shot of desperate Pocahontas racing to the scene to help. And here’s a shot that looks straight out of a Julie Taymor stage show:

In fact it gets weird enough that each side of the conflict creates an abstract cloud of smoke with all their saber rattling, and the two clouds collide and create thunder and lightning as a preview of what’s gonna happen when the two sides clash.

I should mention that this a real deal musical, with elaborate numbers where crowds of dudes are marching around geometrically, moving their shovels in unison and shit like that. And I don’t want to spoil the ending but the ending is the boat is leaving and she runs and runs and she gets to the edge of a cliff where she watches the boat float away and she stands there looking awesome and as the music swells and brings back themes from earlier songs a gust of wind blows a stream of colorful leaves around her and out to the dude in the boat and there is symbolism and what not but even if there wasn’t this would be a cool and really dramatic way to end it.

Keep in mind I also thought THE MISERABLES was really moving. Sorry everybody. I am not a musical guy, except when I am.

I like watching this in context with the other Summer of 1995 movies. Remember in BRAVEHEART Gibson is gonna be publicly executed and it keeps making you think maybe somebody can stop it? Here he actually does get saved, it’s the whole point of the story! This should’ve come out before BRAVEHEART just to fuck with us, get us used to Mel Gibson getting rescued at the last second.

It’s funny to think that Gibson played this character and William Wallace (and the guy in the mirror in CASPER) so close together. They’re similar in that they’re the best fighters and most charismatic leaders of their people, and they take a moral stand that disagrees with their sleazy government. But of course Smith is part of the invading party in this one, not the locals under occupation. And he chooses against fighting instead of for it.

Also he sings in this one. So it’s different.

But in both movies he fucks the other side’s princess. Or at least he kisses her passionately, which is Rated-G for “he fucked her.”

Another connection to another Summer of 1995 movie is that they coincidentally have almost the same shot as BATMAN FOREVER:

Watching this on blu-ray really convinced me that it doesn’t get enough credit for how good it looks. The backgrounds are done kind of stylized like SLEEPING BEAUTY. If you think about this movie you probly think of a closeup of Pocahontas and her raccoon pal and maybe rowing in a canoe or something. But the true beauty of the movie is in the wide shots. Tell me these things don’t look stunning:

These are all actual screencaps I made, but most of them look like the pages out of an “art of” book where you wonder why the movie can’t look as good as the concept art. Give mid-90s Disney some respect here. Those bastards could really paint up something pretty back then. If you ever wondered why the grinning bobcat grins, that’s why.

Post-script:

Perhaps this film’s most important contribution to our culture is in providing a song that served me very well in karaoke a couple times. The heart-on-its-sleeve corniness of “Colors of the Wind” made for the perfect counterpoint to a bunch of dudes trying to rock out to cool tunes by bands that I recognize the name of but were after my time and I wouldn’t have been into them anyway. They’re trying to recapture their youth and then I come up with an impassioned plea talking about “I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name” and “the rainstorm and the river are my brothers” and all kinds of awesome nature shit like that. Nobody knows what to make of it.

Unfortunately another time I did it I learned that alot of girls grew up watching this movie over and over again on clamshell VHS, so when I accidentally sang it in front of that age group they all swooned and sang along and said “I love this song!” It threw me off.

Despite that, POCAHONTAS won 2 Oscars, for best original song (“Colors of the Wind”) and best musical or comedy score. There was a DTV sequel. Christian Bale went on to become AMERICAN PSYCHO and Batman. Gibson did animation voices for an episode of The Simpsons and for CHICKEN RUN before not really being considered family friendly anymore.

VERN has been reviewing movies since 1999 and is the author of the books SEAGALOGY: A STUDY OF THE ASS-KICKING FILMS OF STEVEN SEAGAL, YIPPEE KI-YAY MOVIEGOER!: WRITINGS ON BRUCE WILLIS, BADASS CINEMA AND OTHER IMPORTANT TOPICS and NIKETOWN: A NOVEL. His horror-action novel WORM ON A HOOK will arrive later this year.

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I think this one showcased the peak of the 2D Disney animations. It’s their most beautiful looking movie out of that era. I also think the soundtrack is very underrated and one of the stronger ones. I also appreciate that despite changing history Pocahontas is still a strong young woman of color with connections to the earth and life across it that are beyond regular people. They portrayed a pretty cool role model for someone like my niece to look up to in these movies who may look closer to her than say a Princess Elsa.

Disney doesn’t give us enough ethnic leading ladies in their animated flicks. I think it was just this one then MULAN and the disgraceful PRINCESS AND THE FROG but at least they got one out of the three pretty well. Actually 2 cause I thought Mulan was pretty respectfully handled too at least compared to Princess Tiana.

One possible reason the film has a muted reputation is that maybe it didn’t really appeal to kids as much as the previous Disney Renaissance films, or at least maybe not to boys very much at all. I rented this when it first hit the ol’ Clamshell when I was 9, and was bored out of my mind. I gave it a shot after AVATAR brought it back onto the pop culture agenda and quite enjoyed it. Didn’t remember it being quite so beautiful though, I want to see it again now.

Personally I consider HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME Eisner-Disney’s last hurrah. The gargoyles are obvious pandering, but the rest of it is pretty bold and works a treat (from what I remember, I haven’t seen it in quite a while). HERCULES has aged badly, MULAN and TARZAN were mixed bags and strangely forgettable, and everything after isn’t really in the same tradition (though I’m very fond of EMPEROR’S NEW GROOVE).

Pacman 2.0 – HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME was pretty hardcore. Starting with BEAUTY AND THE BEAST I had seen all of those Disney Renaissance movies on the big screen because I had this crazy dream as a kid of growing up to become an animator. I never saw so many traumatized kids (including my poor kid sisters) as I did anytime Frollo really went mad. I loved it as a 12 year old though took it as a nod to the Lon Chaney movie’s horror roots.

I think POCAHONTAS and HUNCHBACK were the most “adult” movies of that era and some people who were to young to appreciate them as kids might want to look back on them. Certainly leagues ahead of HERCULES or TARZAN which for some reason have a lot of merchandising and healthier legacies than HUNCHBACK or POCAHONTAS. I did enjoy both of those for what they were but they were clearly lower tier.

Funny enough POCAHONTAS was the one that I didn’t see on the big screen out of all of those. I didn’t visit my family down in Florida early that summer and it was kinda a tradition for us to see these movies together. Looking back at how majestic the actual look of the movie was I kinda wish I did to truly appreciate the scope of it all.

It’s interesting that Disney got (and still keeps getting) criticized for being all “formula”, but whenever they tried something new, either more adult approaches with POCAHONTAS, HUNCHBACK and of course THE BLACK CAULDRON or fast paced comedy like HERCULES and EMPEROR’S NEW GROOVE, they get criticized for steering away from their formula too much. Oh well, some people just can’t win, I guess.

“A Whole New World” was sung around my place ad nauseam in the mid 90’s, though I never got to karaoke it. I often would pull out Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, to keep it real.

THE LION KING is up there for me as the most enjoyable overall of the 90’s Disney output. Emotional and funny (yes, it takes the lowest common denominator of jokes like farting warthogs to make me laugh, guilty!), and not annoying like the ADD joking from Williams which undermined ALADDIN. My daughter loved POCAHONTAS, as a kid. I never sat down with her to watch it, which I now regret.

It’s funny to read that the animators at Disney all wanted to work on was POCAHONTAS because that was supposed to be the next big prestige picture and that LION KING which was made at the same time was considered almost like a second rate “B picture” that nobody thought would be a hit.

I don’t think I’ve seen this film since the theaters. I remember being disappointed in it, but it may have just been that I was aging out of these sorts of films. I remember hearing once from someone who had worked at Disney that the company purposefully hired Russell Means to voice Powhatan because his long history as a Native activist provided them some cover if people became upset with the film. Although, I’m sure his defense of the film is entirely sincere, and he makes a good point. The New World also merged plenty of myth with history, but I’m okay with that since the Pocahontas is pretty much America’s founding legend. There’s a reason why people want to continually retell this story: because depending on how you tweak it, it says a lot about the formation of post-Columbian North America.

Also, I didn’t realize this until now, but Christian Bale has acted in two retellings of the Pocahontas legend: this and The New World. Weird.

This is my collection of Disney Princesses as raptors. In honor of the movie Jurassic World, I decided to illustrate some raptors the way I feel they should be portrayed; as princesses. In the words of my self, “A princess is many things, and a raptor is one of them.” -me. I hope you enjoy the collection and take time to look at my webcomic while you’re here. Thanks for the fun times!
-LC

Vern’s definitely fonder of “Pocahontas” than I am but I agree the art direction is absolutely fantastic. Michael Giamo was the art director and he’s a huge, huge Eeyvind Earle fan, (Earle of course being the guy who painted most of the backgrounds in “Sleeping Beauty.”) His use of color is pretty genius. He was actually the art director of “Frozen” which is why the colors of the Anna and Elsa’s outfits pop so much. Dude loves purples and blues and greens.

Cristy Maltese Lynch was the Background Supervisor on “Pocahontas” and later did the same on “Home on the Range,” another not-so-well received Disney flick with gorgeous art direction. She’s a sorely under-appreciated talent.

Feature animation tends to be fairly conservative when it comes to color (TV tends to be where the offbeat art direction comes from) so it’s always worth celebrating any flick that breaks the mold.

I would like to continue with RBatty024’s point and mention that The New World was released ten summers after Pocahontas. Another excellent article, Vern, I am looking forward to reading your 2005 Summer Movie Flashback in ten years and hope The New World is included. Your work is so meaningful to me and so inspiring.

I withdraw a portion of my last comment, it was ten calendar years and not ten summers, it was almost nine and a half years to the date as The New World was a Christmas release. I must have been thinking about how it is summer now. Please keep up your amazing writing Vern, this is my favorite thing you have written since your Return of the Jedi review.

I don’t get the complaints that it’s underated visually. This movie is fucking lorded for being a visual masterpiece in most places. Cause… well yeah it was the top disney dudes at the top of their game. It’s the absolute shit in terms of visuals. Just always found it kinda boring otherwise.

It’s interesting going back to Siskel and Ebert’s review of this, where Ebert seems to feel the movie is too serious to be one of the all-time Disney greats. I just rewatched it tonight (on the 10th anniversary DVD I own; Christ, I’ve been around a while), and have the opposite complaint: its penchant for cartooniness hinders the movie it might have been. I still think highly of the movie, just because it’s such a lush visual aesthetic. It’s the kind of world you want to hang out in, and go canoeing with raccoons.

Wow, this was the last movie I saw with my high school girlfriend before she broke up with me and before I left for college. Therefore that whole summer any time I heard Colors of the Wind I would cry inappropriately. That means I would also be sobbing at Vern’s karaoke. God, this series is taking me back.

I should probably watch it again. I do remember thinking the language device was clever. It does look like the same cliff from The Lion King, doesn’t it?

Freaking The Lion King. I loved it as a child, than watched it again like a year ago and noticed that it’s a story about two quarterback one-percenters who fight queer Lenin-like figure to preserve the purity of monarchy. This whole circle of life philosophy is basically about how it is cool to literally eat the lower classes because we’re going to die and fertilize the earth and it somehow makes it fair. Also, the alternate lifestyles (hakuna matata) are a joke and an escape from responsibility.
I have some problems with its politics is what I’m saying. Pocahontas seems much more reasonable.

Speaking of underrated Disney flicks, does anyone remember ATLANTIS?
Sure, it’s a pretty blatant mixture of elements filched from STARGATE and Jules Verne,
but I always kinda enjoyed it – especially the Mike Mignola-derived aesthetic. It deviated
from established Disney formula by not having any talking animals and songs, so, naturally,
it flopped big-time back in the day. (I went to see it precisely BECAUSE it didn’t feature any songs.)

I think it’s funny that critically-hammered flops like ATLANTIS and TITAN A.E. actually don’t seem too
bad when you watch them these days. I’m pretty sure that if they were live action, they’d blend right in
with the current crop of tentpoles.

Great thoughts, all… And yeah, I have never understood any of the backlash on this one. Not historically accurate? Who cares. The whole story had fallen into basically folklore- just based on tiny shred of fact to begin with. The movie is as or more respectful and reverent of Native Americans and their culture as any other film I can think of. And definitely heady stuff for a family, animated musical. And yes, the songs are also fantastic.

Another Avatar connection… the previous area at Disney’s Animal Kingdom known as Camp Minnie Mickey is where there was an intimate Pocahontas show… which was really just a woman in costume/character singing Colors Of The Wind and Just Around The Riverbend and doing a thing with live forest animals. Well, it is gone now as that whole area is being re-done as Pandora now. Despite being lukewarm on Avatar, I know it will be a beautiful and immersive (and more importantly totally unique) theme park experience… but I will still miss the always gorgeous and always engaging and always angelic-voiced Pocahontases and their little show.

Never bothered seeing Pocahantas, last animated film I saw in the theater was the first Toy Story (unless you count the awesome Beowulf, but that was more motion capture I feel), but you nailed it with that song. “Colors of The Wind” is as epic as they come.

One or two years after this movie came out, a young woman from my area recorded a super cheesy dance pop version of COLOURS OF THE WIND. She even was in the American Billboard Charts with it for a week (#99), which is why she was on the local news. That’s all.